1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mobile terminals such as mobile phones and PDAs (personal Digital Assistants), and their control methods. In particular, it relates to a technique for acquiring location information of a user (mobile terminal) and controlling so as to automatically decompress a prescribed application program when the user enters a prescribed location range.
2. Description of the Related Art
In addition to the original function for talking, recent mobile phones are capable of sending and receiving e-mail and accessing the Internet.
Also, they have come to offer various functions such as the ones for enjoying games, downloading music data to listen to favorite music, and taking pictures by using their built-in cameras.
Those mobile phones are further including, other than games, functions of showing 3D (Three Dimension) characters on their standby displays, and programs for such applications are expanding up to about 100 Kbytes in size.
Further, recent mobile phones have come to have functions of using radio waves from GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites and base stations, and determining their locations. Usually, in determining locations by using GPS satellites, it is necessary to capture three or more GPS satellites outdoors. However, it is also possible to determine locations indoors according to the information from a plurality of base stations.
JP-A No. 247917/1999 discloses a device having a function of determining the current location of the device and displaying information related to the location such as shopping lists and rebate checks.
As described above, in addition to the use for talking, mobile phones are becoming multifunctional, being capable of sending and receiving e-mail, accessing the Internet and providing games, which require larger memory. However, since a mobile phone is a mobile device, the amount of memory available on it is limited. For reducing memory consumption alone, it is possible to compress/preserve application programs of the functions that are not always used and to decompress/run such programs when using them. However, in this method, whenever using an application program, a user has to wait while the program is being decompressed, which makes the user feel uncomfortable. Further, when the user doesn't have enough time, there occur problems such that the user can't use the application program, etc.